There has been a recent resurgence of discussion on various blogs that I follow (Troll Racials are Overpowered and The Pink Pigtail Inn being the ones I remember best.) pertaining to sexism. This is a good debate, and I am definitely firmly on the side of 'it might be an improvement to have more femininely-gendered characters (hereafter referred to as "women" for the sake of convenience) in the game'. However, this should not be done in the way that Jaina was reduced to a whiny, needy woman who is almost nothing like her original character. Nor should devs follow the example of whoever wrote the plot and dialog for Metroid: Other M. Yeah... Samus as a crying little girl and a bitch makes no sense. Granted, it could be possible for her to be outside of normal social conventions such as politeness - she is a bounty hunter, after all. But she should not be cowering in front of Ridley! She's fought and defeated him several times.
Anyhow, to the meat of my post. Yes, there has been a great advancement in the characterization of women characters in scale of the history of gaming, but I can envision going beyond that binary some day. I have a dream where the choice of sex isn't labeled gender, and is properly a fill-in-the-blank. I would love for my Blood Elf to be a bit more androgynous, and not a bubble-pop blonde with large breasts. City of Heroes at least paid lip service to that with having sliders on various measurements. (Sadly, the 'breast size' slider doesn't go down past what looks like a C-cup, thus defeating the purpose for me.) Of course, the players and people on the side-lines would see this as pandering to the 'rainbow agenda'. (Yes, I have heard that term and think it humorously ridiculous.) This is a somewhat touchy debate because it really hasn't been brought up as more than a hand-wave except for some tabletop RPGs which have explicitly mentioned that your character doesn't have to be stereotypically strong, white, male, masculine, heterosexual, and a womanizer.
Damn it, if I want to play a transsexual/gay/gender-variant character, I should damn well be able to. Unfortunately, this gets laughed at. Even in games like Exalted, where the Lunars have several abilities blending together the sexes and genders, my characters get laughed at quite a bit. That's right folks: even in the hardcore nerd sub-culture, gender variant people are looked askance. I do remember that I had once decided fuck it, i'm rolling up a masculine male character. The group I was gaming with kept making cracks to the tune of, oh, that's cute, she wants to be competent and have an impact on the story. (This was before I had really realized who I am and was still considered a 'girl' by everyone, so at least they weren't displaying a complete lack of tact, in addition to being rude.) I simply tried to explain that just because I was playing as a masculine male character, that I didn't necessarily not want to be a girl. The group was still confused, so I just went with, "fine, she's a girl, can we please keep playing?". I find it funny that if a masculinely-gendered person plays a woman, that he is not considered odd, but jokes are made about booty-calls and so on, while a woman playing a man is looked at funny and everyone one starts wondering if she's a lesbian or something equally silly that has nothing to do with the gender or sex of the character.
So, TL;DR? Here you go: I'm happy that female women are getting more appropriate recognition in the gaming community, despite it being much more bad than good for the time being. Also, I really do hope someday that I can just be me or play a character outside the box without trying to shove myself/my character in with women because I happen to have XX chromosomes. Come on society, realize we have way more in common and that there are more than 2 choices.
Remember: gender is not sex, is not sexual orientation, and only sex can most of the time be a binary. Gender and sexual orientation are definitely fill-in-the-blank, not a choice of man/woman, male/female, or homosexual/bisexual/heterosexual.
To be fair, I doubt we were condescending your character because of its gender, and more for the fact that you often play Halflings. Small-sized characters have to earn their respect; sad but true. Sparrows may be aggressive enough to drive off hawks, but humans still look at them as adorable little birds to be fed in the park.
ReplyDeleteIt's not the gender or sex, it's the height.
...That came out of nowhere, but thank you for the spelling correction otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI am nothing if not unexpected. Do you recall the masculine character in question? I'd like to defend my supposed mockery, if it was that affecting.
ReplyDeleteNow that this was cleared up in person and its way too past the point, I'd like to mention for the sake of the internet that this game and character mentioned was when I was still in high school, and therefore had never met Dire Human.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I almost always play androgynous characters online when the choice is available. This was never really something that I consciously did originally, it was more that I didn't care to make an ultra masculine or ultra feminine avatar, because I wouldn't feel right playing the role of either.
ReplyDeleteThe best system for this is Second Life, IMO, even though the engine for it sucks otherwise. It allows great variety in what you represent yourself as.
(Oh, and in WoW? I play a female dwarf. :D)
Heh, I play a female Tauren as my main, just because the male Tauren look kinda silly; being hunchbacks and incredibly tall.
ReplyDeleteHey, I found your site from your post on another forum. I think it's great that you've decided to bite the bullet with your gender reassignment and get on with your life as you want to live it. :-)
ReplyDeleteAs a female-bodied person who doesn't really gender identify as anything and who plays World of Warcrack, it annoys me that there has to be so much sexual dimorphism among the races. I don't like that it's nearly impossible to play a female character without a prominent bosom, or a male character that doesn't have huge lumpy shoulders, rendering of stringy muscles on the skin, and an ugly leer on its face. I keep hearing rumours that the Blizzard designers are going to update the characters to make them more customisable, but I've yet to see anything official on it.